I used to work for them for a few years, started in T1 and then internal helpdesk. Amazing benefits for the low end job that it was, and it destroyed my soul in the process.

Anyhow, I found out by accident that you could completely bypass billing department oversight on account credits by adding a service, and then backdating its removal by many months. Sooooo, add the top tier modem service (what is it, almost $200/mo now?) Remove it and backdate it 5 months ago. Bam, $1000 credit on the account. This was in CableData, not sure if you guys are using that.

Also, you better make sure you are being REAL damn anonymous with this post. There is a reasonable chance someone from Comcast is watching it.

Also, I just wanted to say to keep your chin up. I worked there for 4 years between being a T1 tech and then helpdesk/escalations. I promise you, it gets better.

Ok, no it doesn't, I'm lying. You'll eventually find a balance on coping with the magnitude of the suck, or you'll quit. It will not get any better - this is pretty much guaranteed for the position you are in. Get your resume out there and work like hell to find a new job. Your current one will keep making you miserable.

Consider yourself lucky. I worked in one of their "Advanced Solution Centers" and had to do all of it. AFAIK it was an experiment in seeing how much work load they could pile on CAEs before they start offing themselves. I got out of there as soon as I found out I was going to be retention as well. As someone else on here said: get your experience and get out while you can.

Ahhh, upsales. We were supposed to do that when I worked for one of the original big computer companies. I always felt the same way. For years I didn't sell anything... then they offered us a sort of commission. I sold $1000 the first week... and I'm proud to say that it was stuff that actually helped or that people needed. I'd ask what they did most with their computer and I'd find some way to help make that experience better. The bosses were pissed. When asked why I couldn't do stuff like that before, the only reply I could offer was, "Incentive!"

This was my coworker's philosophy when I started at my company. He'd been there for years. Wouldn't lift a finger to do anything more than he was supposed to. His idea was if he's not getting paid to do it why do it.

I had the opposite strategy. I was willing to take on whatever responsibilities were available to prove that I was worthy of that pay raise. Not only has my pay and position gone up, I've even convinced my boss to switch me from hourly to salary and let me work from home most days. That's how much trust he gained in me. My coworker? He's actually been demoted to one of the lowlier shipping positions. Not really a demotion but when there was noone left to do it he got stuck with it. And now I supervise him. Funny how that turned out. True story.

Yeah well, the problem is that for every one of you there are 10 of us that did the same and got no appreciation let aline promotion. It also doesn't matter how much your boss thinks of you, sometimes they simply do not have the power/budget/whatever to reward you.

So the best strategy is the one that fits the particular situation the best.

As a counterpoint, I started a job with the same attitude. They gave me project after project, and I finished them on time, under budget and as kindly as possible. As time went on they gave me more and more to do and less and less to do it with. All the while, they ignored promoting me, or giving me a raise. I left right before burnout set in.

Some places love initive and reward it. Others survive because of churn and burn. It takes time and experience to know which you are in.

Selling stuff that people actually need and want is so much easier than doing it the other way.

I was a CSR for Verizon Wireless and I made bank on the incentives for sales merely by being all "Hey, you mentioned that you and your wife both travel a lot for work. Are you familiar with Facetime on the iPhone? Both lines are eligible to upgrade," and then I'd have sold two iPhones.

I used to work for Verizon landline customer service. Same thing as it seems you are experiencing. Long story short, I'm a nice person with a genuine interest in helping people, but I wasn't well equipped to handle a great deal of situations that I should be able to do something about (even if my solution was getting them to an appropriate department- there often wasn't one) and when I tried to take the time to get them to hate their service/the company less I found that upper management probably would have rather me use an "I'm sorry to hear that" and then give them the cold shoulder so they'd hang up. Due to the screw ups and indifference of others I tried to clean up other people's messes, but it was frustrating that sales and quantity of calls taken carried far more weight than building customer loyalty.

Anywho, sometimes people would say "I'm pissed at you guys, there seems to be no solution to my issue because I've been trying to get it resolved for weeks, and btw the last rep was a bitch and hung up on me- I want to complain". Our supervisors couldn't do shit for them aside from what I had available, and all we could say in a situation like this was "go online and fill out a formal complaint, that's the only way your concerns will be routed to the appropriate place", but of course that probably wouldn't get them what they wanted either. I WISH we had a corporate line to get people to. That would have made my life so much easier.

I'm going to guess that once Google really starts forcing cable and DSL companies to get their act together, things will improve. These companies can play fast and loose with their customers because it's an uncompetitive market.

Unfortunately, Google's weakest part is in technical support. Google's tech support for Android products is dumped onto the carriers and manufacturers and what little support Google does offer for its products revolve around knowledge bases and self-help groups.

Outside of the Google Fiber test market, I doubt we will see any sort of changes to pricing or performance until a cheap fiber competitor steps into the field.

I just used Google for support for an issue with google play (a $5 purchase), it was easy and painless. No bullshit from the guy, just fixed my problem and that was it. I also like that their system calls you when they are ready, instead of you having to sit on hold.

Probably, at least the super large scale ones. Some people had $300 bills every month if they had FiOS and wireless. We didn't do the wireless but they'd get billed together if the customer so chose, people usually thought we were the same entity. If they were mad at us, they'd usually get mad at VZW too by association.

It would frustrate me with how the company prioritized things. Long calls were never good, but credits were highly discouraged unless you could see in the notes that another rep promised them something. There would be situations where they had a damn good reason that they should get a credit and I could validate it through plain logic, they really had a previous rep promise them something but they didn't note it, or they were just arguing some menial fee to oblivion. It was annoying having to argue against a credit when that wasn't even how I felt, which resulted in a longer call and a pissed off customer. It seems most rational to discuss the problem with the customer, issue a credit and make it seem like you're doing something special for them as a one time favor, they're happy, and they're off the phone. Instead, you're arguing with them for way longer than you should over ten bucks, and they're pissed and want to disconnect. For those big spending customers, is the monthly subscription that ends up being lost really worth not giving them ten dollars?

I am a Comcast technician and our customer service is very poor and its all scripted and they cut corners and I am very sorry to the customers. But please understand that regardless of your phone interactions, the technicians are there to help you to the best of our abilities. I take great pride in my work and do whatever I can to solve your problems and if I cant, I make sure to get in touch with someone who can. There are bad apples in every bunch, just dont let the actions of few speak for the many. We (techs) are held to very high standards and we cannot cut corners or we will be caught. We are only there to make sure your issued are solved and that you fully understand how to operate your equipment. I am there to help, I understand the prices are wack, I get that customer service sucks and the equipment is usually always used, but we can only use what is given to us from the warehouse and cannot change prices. So pleeeeeease show respect toward your techs because we genuinely care about the customer because our checks and bonuses depend on YOU.

Dude, I work for Comcast. Don't BS me. Techs are just as crooked as anyone else. There are good techs, there are good DSRs and there are good CAEs. It's the nature of people... but techs aren't the saints of the company holding shit together.

I got a call from a customer who found a keylogger on his laptop that was installed by a Comcast tech (he had a pretty strong case for why he believed that) and he caught the same tech looking through his personal belongings in his bedroom. A room where the tech had no work to do. He kicked him out of the house, and rightfully so.

Dunno. We used Twitter a couple of times to cut through Customer Service Hell and actually get some quick resolution to a couple of problems we had with our cable service. I've noticed the @ComcastCares and @ComcastBill accounts (which used to be quite active) haven't seen much activity of late, though. Using social media to do customer service is a great idea in theory, but it just doesn't scale for companies with millions of customers.

Both my parents work for Comcast and I can tell you, they hate their jobs, the only reason they still work there is because they need the money.
Although they worked with my mother when she was going through cancer treatments, for that I must thank them. But my father comes home everyday upset at everyone and everything because the system they have in place is complete shit.
My father insists that Comcast is a good company but I can tell that its stressful and impossible to get anything done.

Good to their employees. I have great benefits, much less expensive than when my wife had them through her job at a retail pet supply store. The same coverage or better for half of the price. I also get 2 weeks paid vacation, 8 days of paid sick leave, and 3 floating holidays per fiscal year.

Disagree. Comcast is a fairly good product, and there are a noticeable percentage of really good people trying to make it a better product. But as a corporation, Comcast has become a collective of cogs in an overly complicated machine, and no matter how great 1/10th of those cogs are, all it takes is another 1/10th of those cogs to be broken for the whole machine to fail to function.

I, too, work at Comcast, and I can say that everything OP has been saying is accurate.

The corporate culture and management are only concerned with sales. Service is nothing of interest - sell, sell, sell. You are not on the phone to help customers, you are there to SELL them more services.

The technical departments chase metrics on spreadsheets and cannot afford to care or to go the extra mile for customers. That, my friends, would get them written up.

More and more critical jobs are being eliminated and handed to third-party contractors each year as the stock price climbs ever higher and the bonuses rise to the stratosphere.

I would estimate that ninety-nine percent of the Comcasters that I have worked with would love to help customers with their problems but they just are not allowed to do so the way that things are with this company.

I work for Comcast. This is true. I remember when the company asked for feedback on how they could make things better. I wrote a 4 paragraph rant about the salary difference between me and the CEO even though I am the one responsible for taking care of his profit makers.

Why did I bother? Why would anything ever change for the better for the worker at Comcast?

Comcast is the epitome of what's wrong with corporations in America, and when I hear coworkers say they think their benefits are good, I feel like screaming at them.

Create a union and then maybe we could bargain for better than lower class wages and benefits.

Why do so many people settle for shit pay and better than nothing benefits?

I work on a submarine and as I walk towards the boat before a deployment, I feel like I am about to turn myself into a prison for a 4 month sentence. Because that is basically how life underwater is. There are times during inspections or exercises that I haven't had more than an hour of sleep in four or five days, feeling sick from exhaustion and coffee and dip just trying to stay awake in a dark blue room staring at sonar equipment. My job is fucking TERRIBLE sometimes.

But after reading all of these posts about Comcast workers, I think I may have a better job. I work with my friends, I can cuss, fool around, wrestle in the spaces with doors, and my supervisors actually listen to us. Respect is earned and actually means something. Guys who are shit hot can actually make things happen and gets things changed for the better, based solely on trust and respect.

It is one of those intangible things that can make life so much better. When supervisors actually listen and make you a part of the solution. I don't really know what I am trying to say here I guess. Sometimes out at sea I used to think no one on earth had a worse job than I do. I guess I should take the good with the bad and at least appreciate the relationship structure on board as opposed to a gigantic souless corporate environment like Comcast.

As a Guy who works in tech support at a smaller competing company.. If you have a Cisco HD Box, they're INCREDIBLY responsive DVR's and HD Boxes.. the scientific America garbage is 10 year old technology they hold on to because: 1) No competition, no reason to be pushed to upgrade.. 2) Cheaper to use old refurbished Technology for limited/basic TV services... then use Fresh technology for higher paying accounts.

Comcast tech here, most of our stock is old motorola bullshit including the DVR's. It's cost affective for them to keep using the old technology. the rental for a HD DVR in my market is 16.95 a month. The box has paid for itself in about a year and a half and everything comcast makes on it after that is pure profit.

That's not entirely true. I'm a technician for comcast and what we have been told by management in my area is that they can only order a certain amount of new equipment per fiscal year. We still get the old boxes, but some new ones too. I personally won't use and old hd or hd/dvr that doesn't have an hdmi output. Also, I hate my job too.

I personally won't use and old hd or hd/dvr that doesn't have an hdmi output.

I've been a cordcutter for the last three years, so I'm very out of the loop, but this made me do a double take. I can wrap my head around the fact that these still exist in 2012. You'd want to keep some on hand for people with old equipment. But you make it sound almost common to give them to people with tv's that have hdmi inputs? Really? (I'm honestly curious here)

I work for <major cable company, not comcast> here, and it's only recentlythat we've started to get mostly HD receivers with HDMI. The component only ones are still extremely common.

Boxes are recycled until they break, pretty much. I never feel very good about showing up to someone's house to install their 'new' HDTV receiver or DVR... which smells faintly of tobacco from its previous owner. Thankfully, that kind of thing isn't too common. More common and more annoying is when the third DVR or receiver in a row from my truck doesn't even turn on... Not exactly the kind of first impression I like to leave customers with.

And yeah, my jaw kinda hit the floor when I started the job "Where's the HDMI port?" Motorola DCT6400 series HD receivers don't have any.

Pretty much all of these "Why does X suck?" at Comcast questions can be answered with a simple sentence or two: Because in many places Comcast has no competition, and, even when they do, they're part of an duopoly or oligopoly. They have no competitive pressure not to suck, and they've mostly captured any regulators who are nominally supposed to oversee them.

Ex hoa president here. I'm glad I vetoed a proposal by the management company to get one of these bundled plans. I also kept out a predatory tow company from towing homeowners cars. If you own your place get the fuck involved. I was only 26 when I was president and I was only there to prevent bullshit and keep our home values.

Do an AMA. Not because I'm interested, but so we can abuse you in a dedicated thread.
I hate HOA, and won't buy a home that has one. The concept is sound, but it invariably becomes the pet project of a retired Nazi concentration camp supervisor.

My home was next to an HOA neighborhood but not part of it. The HOA nazi showed up right after we moved in asking me to sign the new agreement, as the old one was superceded. When I informed him I had no HOA, he disagreed and left the new contract anyway. I threw it away. He put a new one in my mailbox every day until I called the cops to have them explain how that is a felony.

He sued me for not abiding to an HOA I was not part of. When the judge explained tho him I was not in the HOA, he offered to settle - if I join the HOA he would drop the case.
I asked the judge if we could apply the death penalty for stupidity. I was reprimanded by a snickering judge. The case was dismissed. 3 days later my dog was poisoned. I have no evidence he did it.
I took a copy of the HOA and systematically violated every rule on it. My wife balked at the house being painted a pastel yellow, but it actually looked pretty cool when done.

I moved into an HOA community about three years ago. This community includes renters and owners, largely due to that little hiccup the American real estate market had. For the first year I had neighbors who were fucking horrible. They had piles of garbage which attracted and the killed local wildlife, which would then stink of death in the summer heat. They listened to loud and obnoxious music at 5am Thanksgiving morning, and they parked their car on my lawn. On my lawn. They parked their fucking car on my fucking lawn.

When I went to the HOA I learned that the sitting leadership had never written a true CC&R, but had rather simply adopted a non-specific example CC&R used to show people how to write them. They hadn't even changed the name.

Needless to say, I showed a little interest, put a little pressure on, became a board member, and now we have a legit set of rules which keeps the neighborhood clean, imposes fines on violators, and prompted the scumbag landlord who was allowing this shit to happen post their properties for sale.

HOAs aren't all bad. I routinely vote against anything that will affect people's ability to express themselves, or would violate their personal property rights. Basically what I see the HOA's purpose as is to keep the neighborhood clean and quiet. Anything beyond that is just people being assholes, and you can totally shoot that shit down.

It all depends on the building or complex. If the developer hasn't sold sufficient units yet they can essentially operate the HOA under its own management, which can be the worst of homeownership AND having an asshole landlord. Since their interest is in selling out their stake they will order you around to keep your property in immaculate condition to improve the odds of selling what they couldn't already sell. They don't actually want to foreclose on you to get you to comply but they will scream threats along those lines at you and generally make you miserable, possibly even invoking arbitrary fines to line their pockets and pay their own lenders.

We used to have competition....but as soon as comcast came to town, that went out the window.

Their prices kept going up...and up...and up. Then they changed their fucking stupid name to XFINITY!!! Oh my damn, now we are watching the moving picture screen from the FUTURE! Just the name change alone was worth a 20 dollar rate hike.

The also offered less channels, and more shitty ass "on demand" features. On demand would be great, if it was something anybody would want to watch. The movies were mostly old B movies, and anything new had a ridiculous pay per view charge added to it.

I said fuck it and cut my cable....best decision I ever made. Now i just have internet, hulu and netflix. Watch nfl games on some shaddy ass UK site on the web.

I've got to tell you that so far, Comcast has been one of the shittiest companies to work with. Just getting cable and internet was a series of problems. Had to wait 4 days to schedule a technician to come out because apparently they've convinced customers they're too stupid to hook up a cable box and modem on their own. After I insisted I can do it myself, the salesman told me I had no choice. The guy comes in, plugs in the cable, plugs in the HDMI, and voila I have cable. Then I get a bill for $78! SEVENTY EIGHT FUCKING DOLLARS for something I told them I could do myself.

Beyond that, I told them I didn't want HBO but wanted RedZone. Low and behold, I don't have RedZone but I do have HBO. The equipment sucks, the picture drops about 2-3 times every day, and there's a lag between the remote and cable box that makes rewinding difficult.

I work for a local small business and Comcast hired us through a company called Nexicore to go out and look at a guy's computer. The description of what was wrong was very vague. However, they did mention several times that I HAD to install Norton antivirus. So I had no idea what I was walking into and there was tons of red tape outlining what I was and wasn't allowed to say and do. In the end, we found out the guy had a bad motherboard. Needless to say, installing Norton didn't fix it.

OP, no questions for you, only condolences. I am in the exact same position working for AT&T. As of today I am now the only person in my department, and I watch other departments do nothing but what I like to call "the blame game", where they try as hard as they can to make problems look like anybody other than themselves are at fault, so therefore they should do no work to help it. Or if they do have to help, it should be considered a life debt to be repayed upon demand.

I am applying for new jobs every day, I am the last of the employees in my office to find solace in another employer, and every day I am here I just want to walk out and never look back.

Just got out of a talk with our sys admins. Our firewall management device recently had to get rebuilt, and for some reason they decided to replace our 3x1TB drives with a single 60GB, and now it's on us to trim our log files to fit within that because the vendor said it should work.

I was disappointed today that my latest bill went up in price inexplicably. I called to try the old 'I'm gonna cancel unless you give me a new promotional price' line that I've heard has worked. Everyone I talked to called my bluff and didn't put up much of a fight.

So I cancelled. And I feel great about it. I'm ok paying a lot less for somewhat slower dsl.

Is there a better way to go about getting the best promotions? Did I just get unlucky?

Your post actually reminded me that I was over-due for my bi-yearly call to Comcast to ask for a bundle renewal. I was on hold for less than 30 seconds (a record by about 45 minutes) and the guy I spoke to was supremely helpful. I'd definitely say he "actually" helped me out, and I told him that at the end of the call. Just wish he could get rewarded for it!

Docking their yearly raise, quarterly bonuses, moving them to the back of the line for promotion considerations and shift openings though? Well- at Comcast we call that not hitting your metrics.

I've worked for a large cell phone company and a big box store. This isn't just Comcast. The people up top seem to think that fucking over existing customers and suckering in new ones is the most profitable, and maybe it is, but getting punished for going the extra mile for people who fucking deserve it surely is the one of the most soul-sucking ways of earning a living.

Working for the cell company I was the only person in my team to not get a raise two reviews in a row. The fact that I was, on top of helping my own clients, giving help to other people on my team constantly both through our chat system and by going over to their desks and walking them through it? Fuck, I was the only one who knew how to paste an image in our chat window, that is how sad the whole damn place was - but nope, sorry, helping people? That's a paddlin black mark on your record.

In the big box store I refused to push credit cards. Boy did that get me some talks. Never did cave though, and since they were always short staffed and I was one of the few who was actually smart enough to work the computer system... well, let's just say that the job may have sucked, but at least there was job security? :P Was glad to finally get out of both those jobs and I now have a very satisfying career in a small (ie me and my boss and two other people) business. There are sucky things about small businesses too, of course1 , but overall I'm a much happier, calmer person, and I actually do get to help people all day now.

1 Please, please, please, for the love of god, when you are dealing with a small business pay your bills sooner rather than later.

I got to the point where I realised that I was paying over $700 a year for channels I simply didn't watch, and being blasted with advertisements for products I would never purchase.

When I started looking at the finances to see where we could trim the fat, trading that for $85/year on amazon instant video was an easy decision to make. Now that I can watch shows from Amazon on my PS3 too... well, that just sweetens the deal.

I am 4 years clean from Comcast. The level of hatred they generated in my city caused our city to actually create a telecom division of the local city-owned electrical utility (Tennessee used to have municipal franchise laws for cable companies - essentially a legal monopoly). People have jumped en masse to the new telecom just to spite Comcast.

I've had Comcast Blast internet for about a month now. No problems with the service (I always get 50mbit), but the smallest thing took 50 minutes to resolve with the call center, I was being rerouted so fast time seemed to start to slow down and I began having weird, inexplicable experiences from that day that made me question whether the universe is real.

Former Comcast employee here. Without getting too long winded, I'll add that my personal experience wasn't terribly rewarding. Promotions were few and far between. Management was incompetent at best. The turnover rate was rather high. The pay was rather low. When I moved from one state to another, I was told that a job would be waiting for me. It wasn't.

You've pretty accurately described the culture as I remember it. Some people thrive in that environment. It doesn't sound like it's for you. I'm sure you can do much better. Maybe it's time for a new chapter.

Is there anything good about working for Comcast? For the record, I'm a Comcast customer out of necessity since I can't get any other service providers in my area. My experience with customer support is not too bad, although my main gripe is that I feel like I'm being gouged on pricing.

There's a lot of churn at call centers. They generally don't care about the employees because turnover is so high. Moreso than in many other tech jobs. So moral is alway an issue.

Sure, a few folks work their way through the system and get promoted but most move on to other jobs. Your main objective while working in one, should be to make connections not just with your peers but with those in the levels above you as well. Because the turnover is so high, odds are all those folks will move into other jobs which increases the chances you'll get an invite to apply somewhere else.

If you want to get promoted within, you need to find ways to improve service without increasing costs and suggest them (in a way that can be tracked to you) at the appropriate times. That'll get you noticed by the right players and keep you in the game.

honestly, good for you. You shouldn't have to "sell your soul to the devil", so to speak, to get ahead at your job. Sure you'd get promoted but then you would just hate your life even more! Hang in there and wait for the right opportunity to come around

This is not specific to Comcast. My partner works for British Telecom in the UK, and after working for corporations in the States, she says working in the UK and trying to get anything done to help the customer is like arguing with a brick wall.

I would be extremely careful doing this. Each account that you go into is marked with your 3 digit operator ID. Also, unless you use someone else's salesperson ID when processing the order to add the channels, you're going to have a bad time justifying all of these credits/freebies. Just a word of caution, I don't want you to lose your job or anything! For what it's worth, I was in the same position as you for 14 months so I feel your pain.

This is going to sound like a strange question, since I'm not an American.

I live in Canada, and supposedly our internet service is pretty much third world (according to Netflix CEO). I use Telus, and their technicians seem to be independent contractors working out their own vehicles, like a franchise or something. The few times I've had to deal with technicians, they either bitched about telus and tried to help us out, or they silently did their job or left.

The best part is, they left us a card with THEIR contact info on it, so we can talk to the same tech who serviced our place if an issue can up. Does Comcast work in a similar way and do you think that a more decentralized tech system would help things go more smoothly?

I submitted a request to Comcast once asking what their sweet hold music was (home installation department?) and they got back to me saying they couldn't release that information to customers. Can YOU release that information to (this) customer? If I find the song I'm looking for, I will love you forever. It almost sounds like "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers Band, but not quite.

[sobbing] I'm on a fixed income, and if you can't help me,
I don't know what I'll do. [blows nose loudly] [sobbing]

BOB

All right, listen closely. I'd like to help you, but I can't. I'd like to tell you to take a copy of your policy to Norma Wilcox on...[whispering] Norma Wilcox. W-l-L-C-O-X. On the third floor. But I can't. I also do not advise you to fill out and file a WS2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I wouldn't expect someone to get back to you quickly to resolve the matter. I'd like to help, but there's nothing I can do."

I was recently on chat with a Comcast agent when I was considering switching to them (before you say anything, I currently have Altantic Broadband, which is hot garbage). When the agent tried to sell me on it, he told me that the installation was "100% Free." Those are his quotation marks in a chat conversation, not mine. I called him out on it and found out that there were like $200 in charges for installation, which is why he had to promote it at "100% Free" instead of 100% Free.

I find the best way to get things done with Comcast is to allow them to do as little as possible.

Signing up for Comcast and they want to send a technician to an apartment building that already has Comcast cable lines installed? Don't let them. Insist on picking everything up yourself and installing it yourself. They just need to send the signal once you plug everything in, easy as pie and it doesn't cost you $35 bucks.

Of course they spelled my name wrong on my account, even though I signed up online...fucking idiots. I even went to the Comcast Depot nearby to have them change it, they still couldn't get it right.

I'm a contractor for comcast, and I can confirm most of what you just said. However, keep in mind that if you think being in the call center is soul crushing you should try the field.

90% of the people I meet on a daily basis are pissed at comcast and want to take it out on me. They don't want to pay for anything and will throw me right under the fucking bus if they think it will get them free hbo.

Hey sir or ma'am, former Comcast employee here. I worked for Comcast as a Door to Door representative, and fingers get pointed in all sorts of directions. However in the line of work I was in, you could feel the heat of rage and anger we get from customers. Co-workers have had guns pulled on them and threatened with physical violence. Every level of Comcast employee goes through bullshit.

However, as someone who also worked for Dish Network as a tech rep ..the phone calls quickly become mind numbing. Day after day, answering those calls with problem after problem. Some days it's bearable, however it's the days after you realize that the job is rubbing you the wrong way that really make the position horrible.

We know what we're told. Sometimes we're the first to know of outages, sometimes we don't get told and we wasted an extra ten minutes on three calls that ended up in dispatching techs out and then they decide to tell us, oh, there's this weird outage for a few people in this area, no ETA.

Supervisors are clueless. Their job is to listen to calls and fill out forms and prevent 30+ minute calls from happening. They compete with other supervisors to have a team with the best stats. Short calls that meet all of the quality standards and fix everyone's problems in ten minutes and have 3 minutes to up sell and get lots of product revenue and good reviews.

You'd get bitched at if your call was over 13:08 long, which is quite frankly not enough time to open an account and listen to the old schmuck on the end of the line whose level of understanding for the internet is "I put money in and Facebook comes out." to find out that no sir, the internet is working, now it's either your modem or your 8 year old Dell, and I can't just dropship you a new one because you're lazy, I have to troubleshoot it which means you have to open the start menu, no not the off button, damn it wait for it come back on, 10 minutes later your PC boots up, you go to AOL and your email still won't load, "okay open the start menu ON THE SCREEN IN THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER and find the search tool to type "CMD no M like Mary, no, M like Michael, M like MOTHERFUCKER, yes CMD not CND, then ping space google dot com, now tell me what it says.... okay it says get the fuck off the internet.

It gets terrible. We know you're mad that your service wouldn't work. But how do you think we feel after we got off a call two minutes ago where some cunt called in and I guarantee that her problem will be fixed by reseating the cables in her modem and she demands a tech which on average costs hundreds of dollars a day for the company, and when we told her all appointments had been taken from now until Saturday (which she can't reschedule her nail appointment for) and she expects me to tell them to cancel some kind, patient, innocent person's appointment (and he might have a legitimate problem unlike hers) just so her son can watch the game on Friday? Sure, talk to my supervisor who will tell you the same thing. - - - Now I get to talk to you and you groan at disconnecting the coax cable to your STB yet you expect me to press a button and tell it to not shut off three times in a night. You called me to fix shit in your home, you better get your ass off the couch and next to your TV or I swear to god I will take your address and drive 6 states over to do it for you and then murder you and steal your waffles while you bleed out on the floor.

But there are redeeming calls. People who have a legitimate problem and need a tech who missed yesterday's appointment and is happy with the next available appointment in two more days. People whose problem was solved when they powercycled the modem and they thank me for my time and patience. They are the only reason I stayed for 9 months. Thank you to the doctor in Maryland who was patient to wait with me while I got bullshit approvals for dropshipping equipment and had to wait for a chat for 20 minutes and we talked about life and relationships and marriage and politics, and our call ended with him telling me to give him a call if I find myself in Maryland with no place to eat or sleep.

I would commit suicide before going back to that job.

TL:DR, Tier 1 support has limited power to fix some issues, high responsibility, and 10,000 hoops to jump through to meet high expectations, but we do want your shit to work.

I.T. guy here, been in the field for about 4.5 years. At first I was willing to learn anything and everything. I worked 60+ hour weeks to setup a DC, I even helped setup a new accounting system, put new firewalls in place, learned electrical work. Then after 4.5 years I now know why all my co-workers are lazy as fuck, the industry to tears out all of your motivation, management just eats your willingness like it's a chocolate cake, the other employees complain your an asshole cause it took 2 days to fix an issue, and the C-level executives just look at you like a pile of meat.

Who is responsible for hiring your store employees? Now, granted, I have only had contact with employees from two stores, but fucking hell. Always slow, always disinterested.

Story time: When I moved into my own apartment, I went to the Comcast store to buy service. We do the song and dance, complete with the woman blaming the computer for various things, having two people trying to open my account while other people waited. She told me they'd have someone out the next day at 3.

The next day rolls around, 3 comes and goes and I call Comcast. Dispatch tells me the tech will be there soon. No one shows. I call again, a little more mad. Dispatch tells me that the tech called three times to say he was on his way, and, because no one answered, left. I had no missed calls. Dispatch recites the phone number she shows the tech called and it's all sorts of incorrect. We reschedule for two days in the future. NO ONE FUCKING SHOWS UP. AGAIN. I call dispatch and get the same thing. Called, no one answered, recites the SAME incorrect phone number. It took yelling at a supervisor for things to get fixed and they finally showed up a week after I went to the store.

Also, for four months my last name was misspelled, even though I gave the woman at the store my driver license. It took four phone calls before they fixed it.

The one time I needed comcast for support in my home, I was taking a shit when the tech showed up and couldnt answer the phone. I get up literally 30 seconds after my phone stops ringing, call back, only to be told the tech was gone. I was told he would come back, he never did. I rescheduled twice and he never showed.

It really sucked because where I was living, comcast is pretty much the only option. No reason to give fucks if there is no competition. I feel like the fact that I was 21 at the time made them take me less seriously as well, as if my money was worth any less because of my age. Very dissatisfied with my experience with comcast.

I worked for a company which was subbed out by Comcast. I took inbound calls dealing with mainly technical issues (but sometimes billing issues). I thought the same as you when I started; I too love computers and helping people. I thought this could be a solid job (this happened right after I had graduated from high school), I started with this company and received 8 weeks of paid training, as someone who just graduated high school, getting paid to learn was awesome. Once I finally made it to the floor, I realized what this company, and Comcast for that matter, were up to.

Most of the other techs on the floor didn't give a shit. It was a temp job that paid well while they went through school. I saw many people come and go over the two years I was there. Some people would purposely reset a customers router to disconnect them because they did not want to talk to them (this was done because of VOIP being new at the time). People would lie and say they scheduled a tech for the next day and never would (or it would be a week later). They were afraid of being yelled at.

And the customers did that a lot. Comcast sales reps are some of the biggest slime ball crooks. Comcast's service plain sucks. All of them; tv, phone, internet. They suck you in with the cheap promotions (all the while they are not telling you about hidden fees), then once the promotion is over, the price is jacked up to a million dollars. The "managers" that were supposedly gotten to calm an irate customer, would sometimes be the guy in the next desk because the moron taking the call doesn't want to get in trouble.

Bottom line, I saw a lot of shady shit go down in the two years I worked for the company. Seeing the dark side of Comcast personally, I have swayed everyone I know away from them. Crooks and cheapskates.

TL/DR Worked for a company subbed out by Comcast, saw a bunch of shady shit, people not giving a shit about customers and learning their twisted sales tactics.

This will probably get lost, but my one positive experience with Comcast customer service was the tech who came to install my stuff. It was his last day of work at Comcast and he was on cloud nine. He was friendly and chatty and set my stuff up quickly. Then he noticed that my laptop was stuck on the infamous blue screen of death. He glanced at the clock and asked if I'd like some free help fixing my computer. He admitted that if he could drag out my install I'd be his last call of the day so he could leave straight from my apt to go celebrate. He then spent a good hour or two fixing my computer, playing with my cats, and chatting. Best Comcast experience I've had. Too bad it was also on the first day of my Comcast experience...